With cloud services rapidly gaining popularity with New Zealand businesses and government, Vocus Communications is enabling the country’s digital transformation with the integration of Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute to their local data centres for faster, more predictable connectivity to Microsoft Azure.

By integrating Azure ExpressRoute into Vocus Communications’ Albany data centre, Microsoft’s New Zealand customers will soon enjoy direct access to Azure services right here in NZ, eliminating the requirement for traffic to first transit the Tasman on the public internet before reaching the Australian Azure regions.

When the necessary equipment goes online, says Mark Callander, chief executive Vocus New Zealand, it will mean more responsive applications and services, greater resilience. “This means Kiwi organisations can connect to Microsoft Azure without their traffic first having to go via the Internet; linking directly into the Azure cloud platform, it delivers better control, with reduced cost.”

Microsoft Azure offers solutions and options for building, testing, deploying, and managing any type of application and services in the cloud, supporting many different programming languages, tools and frameworks across both Open Source and Windows OS’s.

Gartner anticipates cloud computing to grow more than 17 percent globally in 2019, driven by Platform and Infrastructure as a Service. Similarly, in its ‘New Zealand IT Services 2018–2023 Forecast and Analysis’ report, market intelligence firm IDC reports that local IT services revenue will reach approximately $3.96 billion by 2023, up from an estimated $3.452 billion in 2018.

Quoted in CIO, analyst Chayse Gorton said this will be led by organisations seeking competitive advantage from cloud services. “Organisations are moving beyond questioning whether they should migrate to the cloud…and instead analysing the impact of not migrating to the cloud and how they can use cloud to create competitive differentiation.”

Continuing, Callander says Microsoft is taking the lead in establishing a closer link to its cloud services. “Cloud is one of the fastest growing areas of technology at present; it doesn’t just promise advantages of reduced capital expenditure, more features and lower maintenance overheads, it delivers them, and Kiwi organisations are flocking to the cloud. Microsoft is both recognising strong local demand and responding by delivering a better service.”

Callander says once the Azure ExpressRoute site goes live, all Azure traffic can be routed through this point. Other Microsoft resellers seeking to connect their customers via the Azure ExpressRoute site can also do so by installing the necessary equipment in the Vocus Albany data centre.

“To date, the Vocus Network was already the most connected option in New Zealand to Azure and other major cloud providers through our Sydney data centre. Now, New Zealand’s Azure traffic can go directly through Albany and on to the rest of the world,” comments Callander.

He adds that the development reinforces Vocus Networks’ commitment to be the ‘most connected to global content’ local service provider. “The internet is international and Vocus is working to make the best of the Net easily available for Kiwi businesses and government agencies.”